


Dying Is Easy, Young Man

by Dira Sudis (dsudis)



Series: Gameplay Vignettes [5]
Category: Wiedźmin | The Witcher (Video Game), Wiedźmin | The Witcher - All Media Types
Genre: Apparent suicide, Gen, Quest: Ciri's Room (The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt), Quest: Family Matters (The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt), Temporary Character Death
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-23
Updated: 2020-10-23
Packaged: 2021-03-09 02:41:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,212
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27166735
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dsudis/pseuds/Dira%20Sudis
Summary: Geralt dies and then, as he so often does, wakes up somewhere else and gets on with what he was doing. That... looks a little strange from the outside.(Spoilers for some Bloody Baron & Ciri's Story plot points in The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt, if you're reading closely.)
Series: Gameplay Vignettes [5]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1408447
Comments: 34
Kudos: 217





	Dying Is Easy, Young Man

**Author's Note:**

> "Apparent Suicide" tag is for the outside/NPC view of how it looks when you fuck up and walk your player character off a roof and he dies.
> 
> This is a fairly exact retelling of the bit of Witcher 3 I played this morning where I was just trying to get all of my Crow's Perch looting done quickly and died by stepping off a high spot and then, naturally, respawned back in the kitchen, minus the stuff I managed to loot before dying. I got to thinking about how that would look to everyone else, and here we are.
> 
> Thanks to Trash Morhen for encouraging this!

Eldric watched idly as the white-haired witcher came out the doors by the kitchen, looked around for a moment, and then headed in his direction--toward the garden and the well, probably, more than the half-ruined building they used as a watchtower on this end of the keep. Still, Eldric gave a little whistle to be sure Kurt down on the garden gate had his head up, and he heard Otto hurriedly take his proper place behind him. 

All of them were standing at attention by the time the witcher wandered through the garden. He plucked some flowers and leaves from the plants, then came up the stairs to the upper level, where Eldric and Otto kept watch. They'd been told not to interfere with him in any way, so they both stood perfectly still, staring out over their assigned vantages, while he rummaged through some sacks stored there. 

Then he walked over to the open edge, looked around a bit and made a little "hm" sound, and stepped right off into the air.

Eldric stayed where he was for a long frozen moment after he heard the cut-off cry, the wet, meaty thump, and the horrible silence. 

He walked over to where the witcher had stood, testing the floor carefully. There was nothing wrong with it; the witcher had just... stepped off, and now was lying in a limp heap at the bottom of the brick stairs below, neck at a horrible angle, not moving at all. There was only a little blood, shining ominously in the moonlight.

"Fuck," Eldric muttered.

He looked toward Kurt, who was staring up at him with a _what the fuck_ expression he could easily read, even fifty yards away by moonlight. Behind him, he heard Otto take a few cautious steps in his direction before saying warily, "Eldric? What..."

" _Fuck_ ," Eldric repeated, wincing as his guts chose this moment to cramp painfully. He really had to do something about that, but-- _fuck_. "He just stepped off. He just... he's fucking dead."

" _What?_ "

Otto hurried over to his side and peered down. The witcher still just... lay there, looking very dead. It wasn't like they hadn't all seen enough corpses to know.

"Isn't that the witcher? The one who's supposed to go find..." Otto's voice trailed off.

None of them were saying word one to anyone, including each other, about Tam and Mrs. Baron since they'd... mysteriously disappeared. Completely mysteriously. Definitely not a case of everyone who'd been within a hundred yards that night knowing _exactly_ why they'd left and how and probably where to, if they thought it through for half a minute.

Eldric definitely hadn't thought it through. Eldric knew nothing and said nothing. He'd said nothing to the witcher, either, not about Tam or Mrs. Baron and not about Ciri, though everyone in the keep knew plenty about _her_ , too. Her presence hadn't exactly been low-profile, while she stayed, between hunting with the men and racing the Baron on horseback and _killing a fucking basilisk_.

But the Baron had said no one was to tell the witcher anything about her, because he was keeping that story as leverage, to get the witcher to find his wife and daughter. And no matter how much any of them might have thought it'd be good if the witcher had no reason to look too hard for Tam or Mrs. Baron... they were the Baron's men. They'd thrown their lot in with him, and there was only so much any of them would dare to cross him.

And now it made no difference, apparently, because the mighty fucking monster hunter had just stepped off a fucking ledge and died. On Eldric and Otto and Kurt's watch. _Fuck_.

Kurt had come in from the garden gate, just far enough to see the witcher, and stood there with his hands on his hips, glaring up at Eldric. 

Eldric glared back. What should he have done? They'd been _told_ not to interfere with the witcher in any way! Let him go anywhere, do anything, steal whatever he liked, apparently! How should Eldric have stopped him from deciding to fucking _kill himself_ rather than deal with the Baron's shit for one more minute?

Not like he couldn't understand the impulse, but he'd have thought a witcher would have better options.

Kurt gestured for Eldric to come down, and Eldric sighed and nodded. "Take my post," he told Otto. "Give a whistle if..."

Otto nodded sharply. No need to say that an invasion from outside would be welcome, compared to what would happen if the Baron happened into the garden and found them standing over the dead witcher like the useless idiots they evidently were.

Eldric hurried down, crossing the brick steps and jumping--carefully--off the other side so he could join Kurt without having to step over the body.

"So, now what, guard-commander sir?"

Kurt glared at him. They all answered to Sergeant Ardal, regardless of what ranks he assigned the rest of them, and they all knew it. The rank just meant Kurt stood slightly closer to any shit rolling downhill than Eldric did.

"We can't just fucking leave him here," Kurt muttered. "And I don't particularly fancy going to find the Baron and telling him that just happened. Among other things, no one'd ever fucking believe it if they weren't right here."

"Oh, you saw him too, then," Eldric said, breathing a sigh of relief. He hadn't been sure if Kurt was actually looking their way at the time.

"I fucking saw," Kurt agreed. "So--let's get him the fuck out of the garden."

Eldric glanced around. "Down the old well?" 

They never actually drew water from it anymore; there was still water down there somewhere, but the well shaft ended in dry rock. 

Kurt shook his head. "Don't want to turn this into another fucking _mysterious disappearance_. Don't know if the lads' nerves can take it. Might start blurting out anything if the Baron starts questioning everybody again. He needs to get found promptly, just... not here. And not like he was _ever_ here."

That said, Kurt walked over, squinted down at the witcher, and then extended one hand to open the pouch on the witcher's belt without moving any closer. He carefully extracted the flowers and leaves the witcher had picked here, tossed them all into the flowerbeds, and closed the pouch back up with the other herbs it held still inside.

"He, uh--I think he grabbed a few things up in the tower, too," Eldric said. Wouldn't do to be only half-clever about this shit. 

Kurt nodded, prodded the witcher's pockets, and pulled out a couple of little vials of shiny white powder--not fisstech, as they'd all learned, to their disappointment. Ground-up pearls, for whatever reason anyone would keep a bunch of that around. Eldric nodded, taking the two vials from Kurt and tucking them into his own pocket to return to the sacks the witcher had rummaged through.

"If he didn't come here..." Eldric turned toward the courtyard, mentally retracing the path he'd seen the witcher take. "He must've been down by the kitchens, maybe took a look at that room Ciri stayed in?"

Kurt nodded sharply. "Give me a hand with him, then. We can take him into the kitchens, let 'em think he... whatever. Somebody'll find him there first thing, and the only one around will be Gretka. Baron won't get mad at a little tyke."

"Well, he can try, but he won't get very far once Cook's up," Eldric muttered, though in truth he knew that the Baron did, actually, have a soft spot for girls, and he was more maudlin about it than ever with Tam missing. 

Might've been better if he'd cared more about being soft when Tam was _here_ , but Eldric wasn't saying anything about that to anyone. Didn't know a thing.

He moved around to the head-end of the witcher's still-warm corpse, wincing at the way his head lolled when he hoisted him up the shoulders. He winced harder, when Kurt got him by the knees and they actually lifted him off the ground. Fucker was heavy.

* * *

Gretka woke as soon as she heard the kitchen door opening. It was too soon for it to be Cook, who let her help with chores in exchange for more food than she'd been allowed to eat in an awfully long time. Gretka curled her hand around the green stone Ciri had given her, and nestled down among the flour sacks that made her bed, keeping her eyes shut as she heard two sets of heavy booted footsteps come into the kitchen, and all the way back to her alcove. 

They set down something heavy, something that jingled a little and smelled like blood, and then they left, moving quicker this time. Gretka waited until the door was shut behind them, until there was no sound of boots or voices in the corridor, and then she got up and hurried over to see what it was.

Or, _who_. It was Ciri's witcher, the one she said was her dad even though witchers didn't really have families. He'd only just talked to her a little while ago, and then she'd lain down to sleep, holding onto the green stone like he'd told her to. And now he was dead.

There was no mistaking it; Gretka had seen enough dead folks to know, even if the witcher was a lot tidier than the man the Wolf King had gotten out in the woods. 

Except his head; that lay at a bad-looking angle. Gretka knelt beside him and carefully moved it the way it should be. She heard a tiny _click_ and felt something fit into place when she got it right, almost like fitting broken pieces of a bowl back together. There was some blood, too, she saw, staining his white hair on one side. 

Gretka fetched a jug of water and a cloth and carefully cleaned him up. She left the cloth on the table where they dressed the meat; no one would know the difference. Then she came back and looked down at Ciri's witcher for a moment, feeling sad. She couldn't do any more for him, not properly; she wasn't strong enough to do all the laying-out, so that would have to wait until Cook woke up. 

But she could sit with him. You were supposed to sit with dead folk and not leave them alone until they were buried, that was proper. Gretka went back to her flour sacks and sat down to wait.

She didn't wait long before she saw the witcher's hands twitch, and heard him start to breathe again, rough and rattling at first, then easier, like he was sleeping. 

Ciri had been right. Her dad _could_ do anything.

* * *

Geralt woke up already on his feet, and then looked around, bemused. He was in the kitchen, with Gretka. He could swear he'd _left_ the kitchen after talking to the girl, and he definitely hadn't come back under his own power, so how...?

He looked over at Gretka, who was sitting where she'd been when he first came in, placidly playing with the top Ciri had carved for her. She looked up at him and smiled. "Are you going to go kill all the monsters now?"

Geralt blinked at her. "Uh... yeah. See you."

Gretka nodded cheerfully and went on playing. Geralt let himself out, rubbing at the back of his neck and still trying to remember...

He'd fallen. He'd gone to jump down to a lower roof from that watchtower, but he'd misjudged his angle in the shadows and just plummeted. He remembered twisting in the air, knowing the impact would be bad and wanting to take it on the neck or back instead of his legs; legs would go compound in a bad fall and make a fucking mess, and take days and days to heal enough to run on even if he managed to get them set properly on the first try, to say nothing of the blood and the muscle tearing. Spinal injuries tended to heal really quickly, though, even if they usually left people thinking he was dead until he suddenly wasn't.

There had been guards. They must have thought he was dead, and stuck him in the kitchen--with Gretka, the assholes, like she needed to wake up next to a fucking corpse after everything else she'd already been through. Luckily he seemed to have healed before she noticed anything. 

Geralt smiled a little to himself and stepped out into the courtyard, strolling toward the gardens again just to see the looks on the guards faces when he retraced his steps. He'd have to, anyway. The bastards had taken all the wolfsbane he'd picked out of his pocket, _and_ the powdered pearl. They deserved to shit themselves a little at his sudden resurrection. 

When he got there, though, there wasn't a flicker of reaction from them. Must have changed shifts while he was healing; these ones clearly had no idea. Geralt sighed and got on with collecting herbs, then went to study the well in the corner. No need to go climbing up that tower again right now.


End file.
